Colour theory for beginners

The colour wheel in two minutes

A colour wheel arranges colours in a circle in rainbow order, so that the relationships between them become visible. There are three groups to know:

• Primary colours — red, yellow and blue. In traditional painting you mix every other colour from these.
• Secondary colours — orange, green and purple, each made by mixing two primaries.
• Tertiary colours — the in-betweens, like yellow-green or red-orange.

On a screen, colour actually works by mixing light (red, green and blue), but the painter’s wheel is still the most useful map for choosing colours, so that is the one to learn.

Warm and cool colours

Split the wheel in half. Reds, oranges and yellows feel warm: they suggest sunlight, fire and energy, and they seem to come towards you. Blues, greens and purples feel cool: they suggest water, shade and calm, and they seem to sit back.

Two practical uses:

• Depth. Make the background cooler and the foreground warmer, and a landscape instantly gains distance.
• Light and shadow. In sunlight, lit areas lean warm and shadows lean cool. Shade a yellow object with a touch of blue-purple rather than black and it looks far more alive. The shading guide covers the values side of this.

Three colour schemes that always work

1. Complementary — maximum punch

Two colours opposite each other on the wheel: red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple. Side by side they make each other look brighter. Use one as the main colour and the other as a small accent — a mostly blue picture with one orange object draws the eye straight to that object.

2. Analogous — calm and harmonious

Three neighbours on the wheel: yellow, yellow-green and green, or blue, purple and magenta. They always sit well together because they share a colour. Perfect for skies, sunsets, underwater scenes and anything you want to feel peaceful.

3. Triadic — bright and playful

Three colours evenly spaced around the wheel: red, yellow and blue, or orange, green and purple. Lively and balanced — the classic look of cartoons and children’s books. Keep one dominant and use the other two in smaller amounts.

Value matters more than colour

Here is the secret most colour guides leave out: a picture works because of its lights and darks, not its hues. If you photographed your drawing in black and white and it turned into a grey mush, no colour choice can save it.

Check by squinting at your drawing. Can you still tell the subject from the background? If not, make one of them noticeably lighter or darker. A light subject on a dark background — or the reverse — always reads clearly. That’s why the neon canvas on black paper looks so striking: maximum value contrast.

Limit your palette

With fourteen swatches in the free studio (and infinite colours in the app), the temptation is to use them all. Resist. Choose three colours plus black and white before you start, and use only those. Limiting yourself forces you to mix and layer, and the result looks deliberate rather than chaotic.

In the studio, the translucent marker is your mixing tool: a yellow marker over blue gives green, a red over yellow gives orange, and a purple marker over any colour makes a natural-looking shadow.

A 15-minute colour exercise

1. Draw one simple subject three timesA house, a cat or a tree — copy it three times across the canvas. The tutorials give you a quick starting point.
2. Colour the first one complementaryBlue house, orange door.
3. The second analogousYellow, yellow-green and green.
4. The third triadicRed, yellow and blue.
5. CompareWhich one has the mood you like? That is your colour instinct starting to form.

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